PS5 owners can now expand their storage, with a catch

Sony rolled out an update today that allows PS5 users to store games on external devices via USB. The catch is, you cannot play them directly.

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PS5 games are massive and despite the seemingly large internal storage of the PS5, it can quickly run out. Sony’s band-aid solution is to allow users to move their games from the console’s internal storage and put it in an external storage via USB. They say that PS5 titles are meant to take advantage of the console’s high-speed SSDs so playing them directly from the external device would be not allowed. Weird enough, even direct download to USB isn’t possible.

Instead, you can move the games back into the internal storage. They say that this is still a lot faster than having to re-download the games or copying them from a disc. Applicable games will have the option to only install select game modes, like multiplayer or campaign, if the developer takes advantage of that possibility. Games that are copied back to internal storage would also be updated automatically, should they have new patches. 

It’s currently Sony’s best solution while they work on the m.2 SSD expansion integration in their console. To see the requirements for USB extended storage, you can click here.

Other contents of the update include cross-generation share play where your friends with PS4 consoles can see your screen and even play PS5 games with you virtually, either by passing your controls to them or letting them have the second controller online.

There’s also pre-downloading of game updates, though this would depend on the game developers. What it does is basically download the latest version of the game if your console is at rest and ‘automatic updates’ is enabled. Once the patch is officially released, you can start playing it immediately.

To see the rest of the changes and improvements in the PS5, you can see them in the release notes here.